


Storm Breaking

by CreativeComplex



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Extended Metaphors, Feminist Themes, Gen, How Do I Tag, I Don't Even Know, I was angry when I wrote this, I'm too tired for that shit, Just don't, Minor Character Death, Please don't coment to argue feminist theory with me, Poetry, Short One Shot, So Much Metaphor, Sort of? - Freeform, vaguely historical setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:22:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25775818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CreativeComplex/pseuds/CreativeComplex
Summary: A storm in a cage is sometimes called a girl. But a storm by any other name will still find a way to be free.
Relationships: Elle | Caged Storm & Unnamed Father
Kudos: 4





	Storm Breaking

There is a thin pane of glass separating me from the world, containing everything that I am. I can see through it, I can interact, I can smile pretty like a good girl is supposed to and on the whole, it seems as if I am that good girl. I would tell you I am, but I don't want to. Sometimes I get too tired to lie. 

I am a hurricane in the fragile skin of a girl, a skin as hard and breakable as glass. If I had room to move in here I would have broken it long ago - but how do you break glass with hardly a centimeter between you and the walls of your cage? If you ever learn, please tell me. I need to know. 

Until that day, I will smile pretty, like a good girl. I will never, ever scream, as that is considered entirely improper, and I will never fly, and I will only run when I am allowed. 

The man who thought it a wise idea to prison me here in this girl-cage has a name, but I am supposed to call him 'father,' so that he may more easily explain my existence. And yet, it is true in its way. I - this thoughtful, orderly being painted over the screaming, singing, sobbing chaos that I know I am meant to be - am his daughter, his creation, more than anything else. He made me from a passing thunderstorm and a convenient vessel. 

I miss the wind. 

When my girl-skin was smaller, younger than it is now (although still far older than any storm is meant to be), I was allowed to run, my fascination with the wind still appropriate enough for a human my age. Now, today, as I cinch myself into corset and petticoats and bodice, I am about to lose even that. But I _will_ say goodbye to the winds and the sky and the cold. I will say goodbye if I have to knife my Father on the day of my betrothal. Hopefully it will not come to that. 

So I wedge myself into the gown I will wear today, as if I am celebrating my passage from being property of one man to being property of another. I dress without a mirror - Father cannot abide glass, and so we have shutters instead of windows, water if we wish to see ourselves, but never mirrors. I wonder, sometimes, why he allows the glass caging me, when he won't have it in the house otherwise. I've learned how to look my best anyway. Today, I even put on shoes, and I knock softly on my Father's study door. "Come in," he calls absently, and I think how easy it would be to take him out of this world forever - but no. I cannot think like that. I cannot allow myself to be taken further still from the sky, trapped in prison or asylum. I take a breath of sweet air and enter. 

"Father."

"Elle, child, you look lovely. What did you need?" He cannot help but see me as he wishes I was, particularly when I dress and smile and behave like the young lady he wants me to be. I know this, which is why I put on dress and shoes before I came in. 

I make my voice high and sweet. "I'd like to go outside. Just to-" _say goodbye to everything that ever mattered_ \- "compose myself before we leave." I look at him, glasslike eyes as hopeful as I know how to make them look. He only considers for a moment, quickly assessing whether this is likely to be used as an opportunity for mischief. Then he nods, and returns to his reading. I leave quickly, before he can change his mind. 

The air outside is like a kiss, like the most intimate caress a wind knows how to give. Even trapped as I am in my girl-skin cage - woman-skin now I suppose, but just as much a cage - the winds know their own, and we love each other. I breathe deeply, inhaling as much of the sky as I can in great, joyous gasps. I walk slowly, savoring the air and the great blue roof of the sky, to my hiding place in the gardens. 

I peel off my gloves, and then my shoes and stockings, roll up my skirts as much as I can, baring skin to the sweet, sweet air, drawing as close to it as I can. I will not tell you what passed between me and the sky in that time. Some things are private. Some things are too sad and sacred to share. 

The wind stirred my skirts as I left my hiding place. It seemed as if the entire sky mourned me, but outside air pressure cannot crush a human skin.

I was clean when I returned, clean as if I had not just been seated in the earth. Things are a blur from there, but I remember in bits and snatches that I boarded a carriage with my Father. We rode in silence to the feast in honor of my betrothal. I was not interested in the drive, nor in the grand home of my betrothed. I am sure it was beautiful.

I sit here, now, studying the glass goblet in my hands - how strange to see it used so casually after so many years drinking from pewter goblets! - speaking to no one. I have never cried - storms do not see falling water as a sign of sorrow - but if I could, if I could sob or scream or sing, I would. I would, were I not trapped in this hated cage. 

Somewhere outside, where I should be, I hear the cry of a storm petrel. Something is wrong - everything is wrong, I can feel it building up behind my eyes, lightning fills my veins like blood-

-the goblet in my hand shatters into splinters and I _scream-_

-everyone is staring at me and _that doesn't matter,_ that will never matter again, everything is about to change-

-the windows explode inward like an answer to my prayers, like an answer to the shattering of my glass-

-and my woman-skin shatters apart as well, like so much glass itself, and everything is so wonderfully, terribly _right_ that I would laugh if I still had a body, if I weren't a creature made of nothing but the sky-

-I think I see other woman-skins fly apart but I can't be sure-

-the wind is singing a welcome and I answer in lightning and thunder-

-and the men, the foolish men who thought I could be caged forever are running like the weak, blind animals they are-

-and I hear my Father, my captor, my _victim_ screaming, and then he is silent, he will be silent forever-

-and I am sobbing, I am screaming, I am singing and I am **_never going back._ **


End file.
